College Graduation Rate Disparity Between Hispanics & Whites Decried

• Only 23% of Latinos Gradauted from College  - Compared to 47% for Whites
  

A smaller share of Hispanic students earn bachelor's degrees than their white classmates, according to researchers who tracked students for more a decade. Researchers at the Educational Policy Institute followed about 2,000 Hispanics from 1988, when they were in the eighth-grade, until 2000, eight years after they were scheduled to graduate from high school. Over that period, researchers found 23.2 percent of Hispanics graduated with four-year degrees, compared with 47.3 percent of white students. "If we think access is just opening the door to higher education and just showing them in, we've missed it," institute President Watson Scott Swail said Monday at a news conference in Las Vegas to release the report's findings. The report analyzed societal and educational factors that led to discrepancies between Hispanic and white achievement, including early planning for college, family expectations regarding a college education and the importance of taking math courses in middle and high school. [more]